Part of the puzzle, surely, lies in the disconnect between official rhetoric and lived realities. Americans are constantly extolling โtraditionsโ; litanies to family values are at the center of every politicianโs discourse. And yet the culture of America is extremely corrosive of family life, indeed of all traditions except those redefined as โidentitiesโ that fit in the larger patterns of distinctiveness, cooperation, and openness to innovation.
Susan SontagIn the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself.
Susan SontagPhotographs are a way of imprisoning reality, understood as recalcitrant, inaccessible; of making it stand still. One can't possess reality, one can possess (and be possessed by) images โ as, according to Proust, most ambitious of voluntary prisoners, one can't possess the present but one can possessthe past.
Susan Sontag